Undiscovered Scotland: The Ultimate Online Guide

Walter Bower lived from 1385 to 24 December 1449. He was an abbot
and a chronicler. The wider picture in Scotland at the time is set out in our
Historical Timeline.

Walter Bower was born in
Haddington in
East Lothian. He was
presumably the younger son of a landed or noble family, and entered the
priesthood at the age of 18 in 1403. He then studied in Paris. In 1418 he was
made Abbot of Inchcolm Abbey, which stands on the island of Inchcolm in the
Firth of Forth. Like many senior abbots of his time, he played an important
part in matters of state as well as in the religious life of the country. In
1423 and 1424 he was one of the commissioners who negotiated with the English
for the return of the captive James I. He
also went to Paris in 1433 to help arrange the terms of the marriage between
James I's daughter Margaret and the
Dauphin of France.

But it is for his work as a chronicler that Walter Bower is
primarily remembered. In 1440 he was asked by Sir David Stewart of Rosyth to
undertake the task of bringing up to date Chronica Gentis
Scotorum, a five volume history of Scotland published by
John of Fordun in 1360.
Fordun's rich mix of myth, legend and
history came to a halt with the death of King
David I in 1153. Walter Bower's update was completed in 1447 and called the
Scotichronicon.Fordun's original five volumes had been
expanded out to sixteen. The first five-and-a-half volumes were largely
Fordun's work, with extensive additional
comments and material added by Bower. For additional coverage up to 1371 Bower
continued to draw on later work produced by Fordun, but from there on, for the period
until the death of James I in 1437, the
story is told wholly in his own words: though, as one Victorian reviewer put
it, like Fordun he wrote "in a scholastic
and barbarous Latin".

After the completion of Scotichronicon,
Bower turned his attention to an abridged version, known as the
Book of Cupar, the original of which is now held by
the Advocates' Library in Edinburgh, which is also home
to one of a small number of original transcriptions of the Scotichronicon itself. There are many doubts which can be
raised about the historical accuracy of some of
Fordun's sources, especially in his early
volumes, and these carry through to Walter Bower's work. But the production of
Scotichronicon remains an incredible undertaking,
and it is one that has influenced every work of Scottish history written since
which starts earlier than 1437. Walter Bower died on Christmas Eve, 1449 at the
age of 64.